Parliament passes Indian Institutes of Management Bill, 2017

The Parliament has passed Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Bill, 2017 to extend greater autonomy to IIMs by restricting government’s role in their functioning. It also grants them power to award degrees to their graduates.

Key Features of Bill

The Bill declares the IIMs as institutions of national importance. It seeks to empower IIMs to attain standards of global excellence in management, management research and allied areas of knowledge. It also promises to grant administrative, academic and financial autonomy to these B-Schools.
The bill allows IIMs to grant degrees to their students. It also grants them complete autonomy, combined with adequate accountability. It establishes coordination Forum of IIMs as advisory body. It empowers board of IIM to drive the management of the institution.
The board will have greater participation of experts and alumni. It will select Chairperson and Director of IIM. It will also include women and members from Scheduled Castes/Tribes. Besides, it adds provisions for periodic review of the performance of IIM by independent agencies and their results will be placed in public domain. Besides, it also has provision to place Annual Report of the IIMs in the Parliament and Comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) auditing their accounts.

Background

IIMs are country’s premier institutions imparting best quality education in management and are recognized as world-class management Institutions and Centres of Excellence. India has 20 IIMs now. Earlier, all IIMs are separate autonomous bodies registered under Societies Act. As autonomous bodies and not educational bodies, they were hey were not authorized to award degrees. These awards were treated as equivalent to MBAs and Ph.D, respectively, but their equivalence was not universally acceptable, especially for the Fellow Programme.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2017